Modest Adventures Far from Home

Guatemala

20 July 2011

This week's photo is from a May, 2010 visit to Guatemala. This shoe shine man sits on the main square in Antigua, Guatemala. Click the photo for a much bigger version.

We intended a peaceful weekend at Lake Atitlan, but a few hours after our arrival Volcan Pacaya erupted, closing the airport, then we were hit by tropical storm Agatha and had to flee first Lake Atitlan then Guatemala, where the airport remained closed, for a ride home from El Salvador.

24 March 2011

Heather Berkman writes in Foreign Policy that it's mostly about drug interdiction. Plus there's no place much better in Central America for a U.S. president to visit:

"... El Salvador has remained politically stable. Honduras is still regrouping following the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. Guatemala's government lacks the resources and the political will to effectively combat drug traffickers. Throw in the likely reelection of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua this year, Washington's ongoing tensions with Panama's mercurial President Ricardo Martinelli, and Costa Rica's lack of regional political weight, and El Salvador begins to look more like Washington's foothold in the region."

Entering El Salvador overland from Guatemala, bananas welcomed us to this republic.

23 June 2010

Here is the most vivid photo I've seen of the damage around Lake Atitlan in the aftermath of tropical storm Agatha back at the end of May. We're kind of close to that particular disaster because we were visiting at the time (Read our stories).

I'm unsure, but I speculate this is the village of San Antonio Palopa, where 15 were killed by mud slides. San Antonia Palopa is one of a string of little villages ringing Lake Atitlan.

12 June 2010

Two weeks ago today we fled tropical storm Agatha, from Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, to Guatemala City. We've since learned that subsequently, road access to our hotel was cut in both directions by mudslides.

Elias, the van driver, got us started. Not too much debris in the road. Into and then past the little village of Santa Catarina. Plants bent in toward the van, mud or rocks might have slumped a foot or two from one side into the road, but it was mostly easy to avoid. Pretty much nobody was driving.

Crossing the river just before Panajachel, though, was a revelation. It was a torrent. Already they’d put barricades across the footbridge, and people milled around gaping at the rising water, more than I’d have thought would be out in driving rain.

Part of a building with a corrugated roof, maybe a warehouse or light industrial, was collapsed into the river from its perch on the shore maybe ten feet above.

Panajachel is the main town on Lake Atitlan. The few tuk tuks that were out, which look liable to blow over on a good day, were in full crisis. Water flowed a few inches through the streets.

The whole world was saturated – the rain, the ground, the roads, the air – and so were the insides of the van windows. All fog. First Elias and then we all began mopping. The ventilation was just overmatched, and we’d be mopping all the way to Guatemala City.

At some early point it became essentially impossible to see out the windows, except for the little area Elias constantly wiped down for six hours. For a while we’d slide a window open for a fleeting instant if there was something we wanted to see.

Finally, as the wetness began to equalize inside and outside the van, we dropped that nicety. Especially as we began a steep climb away from the lake toward the department capital called Solola. We drove around a corner and threw open the windows in amazement at what we saw.

I guess this was when Mirja and I realized we were in a real predicament.

08 June 2010

Talked with Janet at Casa Palopo on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala this morning, ten days after we fled the hotel in the middle of tropical storm Agatha, which ultimately killed some 150 people in Central America. The news, thankfully, is pretty good, considering.

There was some slight damage around the hotel. It was isolated, cut off from road access to the villages on either side of the hotel for a week, until Sunday, but yesterday the road was opened all the way to Panajachel, the main town on the lake. Until then, the staff had been coming to work by boat.

Three employees' houses were damaged by mud slides but nobody's family was injured.

Casa Palopo is closed until Friday.

Photo was taken driving away from Lake Atitlan during tropical storm Agatha on Saturday, 29 May. More photos are going up this week in the Guatemala Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.

04 June 2010

The headlines were about Volcan Pacaya and the sinkhole, but the real misery was caused by tropical storm Agatha. Here are quotes from coverage of destruction around Lake Atitlan, with links to the stories in which they appear:

“We walked to the road above the house just in time to see a wall of
mud . . . wash over the bridge and down into the river. The ground
shook with the force and it sounded like a freight train passing a few
feet from you.”

"Where there were roads, it's a mountain of rubble and mud. When you
go through the villages, there's no more villages - it's all a big lump
of mud, rocks and dirt," he said.

Two people died in their village, but one-third of the population of
neighbouring San Antonio, five kilometres away, was wiped out.

"I have an American friend in that village and while the storm was happening, he called me in a panic," Mr Seroussi said.

"The conversation was helpless. He could see people dying with his own eyes."

But Mr Seroussi and his British-born wife, Marcelle, were trying to stay calm.

"I've never in my life heard anything like that storm," he said.

"The noise of the landslide and the water was frightening - it was incredible. You could hear people's houses being taken away."

*****

"The Guatemalan government said more than 36 inches of rain fell in
parts of the country and dozens of towns and villages were inaccessible
because of roads blocked by debris.

The
United States sent six military aircraft to Guatemala, from a base in
Honduras, to ferry aid and help with evacuations from isolated areas.

La
Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City was already closed after
being showered with ash from an eruption of the Pacaya volcano earlier
last week.

*****

"The worst storm-related disaster occurred in a village in Solola
department where a landslide swept away 25 homes killing 15 people,
with another 10 missing, according to San Antonio Palopo Mayor Andres
Cumes.

To prevent an outbreak of disease, the bodies will be buried at once, he said.

*****

*****

We fled Lake Atitlan only hours before it all happened. We crossed the bridge in the photos above within six hours of its collapse. When it gave way the communities around the lake were isolated, perhaps until now, six days later.

01 June 2010

We called Casa Palopo repeatedly until we left Guatemala City and got no answer. Casa Palopo is where we were staying on Lake Atitlan, Guatemala until we fled the rains of tropical storm Agatha on Saturday.

Later Saturday afternoon the bridge on the only road to the lake washed out and still hasn't been repaired. We just hope Janet and Rudy and Guillermo and Jennifer, who were so gracious to us, are okay.

Back in Guatemala City they said it was a ten year storm. Elias, who drove us from the lake to the city, couldn't go home, and still can't, far as we know, because the bridge at Solola remains out until "Wednesday to Friday."

Everything was complicated by ash from the eruption Thursday of Volcan de Picaya. (Guatemala City airport finally reopened on Tuesday, but due to the backup our first shot at leaving was Friday, so we came here to El Salvador for a flight home today, Wednesday.)

Casa Palopo was really nice. Hope it's intact. Have a look after the jump.

Visited Antigua, Guatemala Monday, colonial capital of Spanish Central America. Would have put up some photos, and will in time, but on arrival back in Guatemala City, we learned that the airport hasn't reopened as planned and our Wednesday flight back to the U.S. is canceled. Apparently some more ash in light rainfall. So we had to work out a plan C.

It would be fun to stay and stretch out and call it a real vacation, but before the weather started getting rough it was only a three hour tour, a three hour tour. So we did some jukin' and came up with tickets from San Salvador to ATL on Wednesday. Then we arranged a road trip there for Tuesday. Hope to check in here from El Salvador Tuesday night.

31 May 2010

The weather is calm, but it's not peaceful. This morning's papers cite 82 deaths from tropical storm Agatha and, if
we've got this right, that doesn't include 13 deaths in San Andres
Palopo, a village right next to Santa Catarina, outside of which we stayed until we fled Lake Atitlan on
Saturday.

Fog's got Guatemala City socked in this morning, but there's no rain, and there's even the occasional bit of sunshine. After the eruption of Volcan Payaca and tropical storm Agatha had this place really rollicking over the weekend, quiet is good. They're going to try to reopen the airport tonight at 6:00 and we have a flight out on Wednesday, delayed only two days.

This little guy, from Lake Atitlan on Friday, will be among the photos in a new Guatemala Gallery shortly at EarthPhotos.com.

30 May 2010

I'm feeling pretty good about my genuine "The volcano ate my homework" excuse. The eruption was followed by tropical storm Agatha, which caused flooding all through the weekend.

Here's a photo of a central street in Guatemala City on Sunday, with volcanic ash along all but the middle of the road. The photo at the bottom shows apparent storm damage at a construction site viewed from our hotel.

*****

80 dead. Now that we've made it back to Guatemala City and feel like we're okay, we're reading about the continuing problems that we dodged, with some alarm, on the six hour, ninety mile trip back here from our would-be quiet weekend at Lake Atitlan.

The BBC reports that "A mudslide devastated an entire neighbourhood in the Guatemalan town of San Antonio Palopa," which was the next village, just five minutes drive from the Casa Palopo Hotel, where we stayed on Thursday and Friday.

Samir & Neha here at our hotel, have provisional tickets out on Wednesday both from here and San Salvador, and are waiting to see if the Guatemala City airport does indeed open as planned tomorrow night. If not, they'll bolt for El Salvador. Joe from Phoenix has a flight out on Thursday. Ours is Wednesday.

We've walked the streets of Guatemala City today and found they're more clean than not. Volcanic ash has been pushed into piles. But if you walk under a tree in a breeze, you'll find bits of ash blowing from the branches into your eyes, and your hair. We all have Pumice Hair.

We're on Delta on Wednesday. Thinking of buying a few bags and importing exclusive Volcan Pacaya pumice, for sale in half ounce vials for a mere $9.99. You can only get 'em here. Stay tuned.

Hope to be back at home on Wednesday night and back at work on Thursday.

29 May 2010

The eruption on Thursday of the volcano Pacaya, which killed and injured people, was alarming, because it was between Lake Atitlan, where we'd gone for a quiet four night holiday, and the airport at Guatemala City, which was promptly closed because of ash. Then we learned the rain that had started in earnest on Thursday night and continued for 48 straight hours, was due to a tropical depression that was big enough to have a name.

We bailed out of Lake Atitlan at noon today. It took six hours to cover the 90 kilometers from there to Guatemala City.

As we arrived at the InterContinental Hotel here in the capital (which is running on generators just now), we learned that a bridge we crossed on the way out of the mountains (you'll see water churning over it in the photos that follow) has given way. Glad we left when we did.

Guatemala must be uncomfortable being the second story on the BBC World newscast we've just heard, late now on Saturday night, because if you're Guatemala, that can't be anything good. Their story was that twelve are now dead from the combined calamities.

Here are a bunch of photos, presented in the order that we took them, of the drive out through tropical storm Agatha.

28 May 2010

My day job is partly in the television business, where the important May ratings period ended on Wednesday (the night that, not coincidentally, a new "American Idol" was chosen). I'm contractually prohibited from taking time off during the three most important ratings periods, so like lots of others in the TV biz, we planned to celebrate the end of sweeps with a long Memorial Day holiday weekend.

I'm writing from Lake Atitlan, a lovely spot in Guatemala, about ninety miles west of Guatemala City, which is only a three hour and two minute flight from our home airport in Atlanta. We've planned a four day retreat at a nice hotel, with a terrace view of the lake, room service and fiction books. This post comes via the free wifi from reception downstairs. We're all set.

Just a small detail. We drove past the three volcanoes surrounding the touristy colonial city of Antigua between 2:00 & 3:00 yesterday afternoon. This morning we learned that one of the, Pacaya, had erupted later yesterday afternoon, killing one and injuring three, closing the airport, and causing President Colom to declare a "state of calamity."

24 May 2010

By week's end we'll be in Guatemala for a quick four night stay at picturesque Lake Atitlan. From our perch here in the southeast U.S., it's faster to fly to Guatemala City than San Fransisco.

Weather looks ...predictable.

The nice lady at the hotel wanted to be clear that while they have internet, sometimes it doesn't work, so we may be sparse while we're there. The Friday Photo Quiz will take a vacation along with us this week.

Tomorrow we'll have the next installment from the eventual book Common Sense and Whiskey, about our trip aboard the steamer MV Ilala across Lake Malawi. John here didn't much enjoy himself on board. Geoff, on the other hand, didn't mind it. Allan and Monika call it "infamous." Get our story here, tomorrow.

Common Sense and Whiskey is the companion to EarthPhotos.com, where you can see and buy professional photo prints from 105 countries and territories around the world, and the blog for Common Sense and Whiskey - the book. It's Intelligent discussion about the world out there.